Choice of Evil

by Andrew Vachss

“So they *could* find me?” she interrupted.

  “It is possible. Nothing is one hundred percent certain in these matters. There is always *some* chance.”

  “Oh,” is all she said.

  “Don’t you want to draw?” I asked her.

  “I always want to draw.”

  “Then why not. . .?”

  “I don’t want you to be mad,” she said, her voice tentative.

  “Why would I be angry?” I asked her, hoping to teach by example the difference between insanity and annoyance—people are so imprecise in their verbiage, but only children seem capable of learning.

  “Because I want to draw you,” she said, her eyes wide and alert.

  A conundrum was thus produced. The child’s intelligence was manifest, a phenomenon not to be ignored. Therefore, despite my desire to make her stay with me as pleasant and stress-free as possible under the circumstances, surely she realized that a sketch of her own kidnapper would be of great value to the authorities. On the other hand, she certainly had ample opportunity to use her eyes, if not her skill at drawing, and my features were, presumably, memorized. If I refused her request, it might supplement the illusion that she was, eventually, to be returned. Conversely, it would perhaps distress her. On balance, I elected to compromise.

  “You may certainly draw me, if you wish,” I told her. “But under the circumstances I’m sure you will understand you’ll have to leave the. . . artwork here when you leave.”

  “It was for you anyway,” she said. “I never keep what I draw.”

  I pondered this internally. Children are generally guileless, but that is a rule to which there are many exceptions. . . some characterological, but most situational. Children are extraordinarily self-absorbed—a characteristic often retained into adulthood. But that sort of analysis did not figure in my assessment—globalization is not a valid problem-solving tool. Why would the child never keep her own handiwork? Under other circumstances, I would have simply asked the apparently invited question. But the child’s mien was that of someone who did not expect to be questioned, so I merely said:

  “Very well. How would you like me to. . . pose?”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” she assured me. “I can just draw while we. . . talk or something, okay?”

  “All right.”

  She opened her backpack and removed a thick drawing tablet and several pencils.

  “I have pastel sticks too,” she said, noticing my observations. “But I don’t draw people with them. Not until I’m done with the pencils.”

  “Very sensible,” I told her. “Pencils are more precise, aren’t they?”

  “They’re sharper,” she replied, as though amplifying her agreement.

  She busied herself at the tablet. I watched her work, dark hair spilling over her face, almost obscuring it from view. I glanced at the tablet and noticed that a good many pages had been removed. Apparently it was true that the child did not keep her work once it was completed. I. . .

  “How long does it usually take?” Her voice intruded into my thoughts, startling me. Even without glancing at my watch, I realized some considerable time had passed.

  “How long does what take, Zoë?”

  She smiled, perhaps at my use of the name she had selected. “For them to. . . I mean, don’t you have to talk to them? So you can. . .”

  “Oh. I understand what you mean now. There is no set rule. Sometimes it takes several weeks for the entire arrangements to be worked out.”

  “What’s the shortest time it ever took?”

  “Nine days,” I answered without thinking. Immediately, I began to berate myself internally for my foolishness. The answer I gave the child was an honest one, but it would not be as reassuring as I had hoped.

  “But this will probably take longer, won’t it?”

  “Yes. Absolutely,” I told her, grateful that she was not going to fixate on a nine-day period and become anxious if it were exceeded.

  “You’re hard to draw,” she said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Your face keeps. . . shifting. I don’t know, I’m not sure. You have to draw the skull.”

  “The skull?”

  “The skull beneath the skin. You have to draw that first. That’s the part that stays the same.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you exactly,” I told her. “May I have a look?”

  “No!” she replied, the first hint of sharpness in her voice since I had captured her. “I don’t like anyone to see my drawing until I’m done. Sometimes I don’t get it right, and I have to keep doing it. So I don’t like anyone to see it until it’s true. Please?”

  “Certainly,” I assured her. “Every artist must work in his or her own way.”

  She smiled gratefully and went back to work.

  On her first night, I asked the child her normal bedtime, but she was vague in response. Offered a choice of evening meals, however, she became animated. When I told her that, yes, she could mix several of the meals I had planned, incorporating components as she wished, she clapped her hands in delight. After great deliberation, she chose spaghetti, spinach, and liver.

  “Do you think that’s gross?” she asked.

  “As a matter of fact, I think it is quite creative,” I told her. “I believe I’ll have the same.”

  The child helped with the cooking. She ate her meal with relish, but watched me anxiously until I assured her that, indeed, her mixed selection was delicious.

  “And very good for you too,” she added.

  Realizing that, for whatever reason, she was not going to be precise about her normal bedtime, I told her that she could, while she was staying with me, go to bed anytime she wished. After all, there would be no school for her in the morning.

  “Are you going to do it?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Teach me. I have a friend. Jeanne Ellen. She’s home-schooled. Do you know what that is?”

  “Certainly. Some states permit—”

  “Are you going to do it?” she interrupted.

  “Do. . . what?”

  “Home-school me,” she replied, as though I were a bit slow.

  “Well, I. . .”

  “I have most all of my books with me,” she said, a pleading undertone to her voice. “And you have *lots* of books here too, the ones you got for me, I mean.”

  I began to protest that I was not familiar with her coursework, but quickly self-edited. After all, how complex could a fifth-grade curriculum be, especially given the abysmal state of American education generally?

  “All right,” I agreed. “But you had better get ready for bed, just in case you fall asleep.”

  “I don’t have any pajamas.”

  “My apologies. I showed you the books, but not the clothes. Over there in the chest of drawers. Take a look. It’s all new, of course. I had to guess at your sizes, but I believe I was quite accurate.”

  The child immediately ran over to where I had indicated and began pawing through the clothing. It was all of good quality, but not up to her usual standard, I assumed.

  “Can I keep all this?” she asked, surprising me. After all, if she was not permitted an excess of books, why. . .? Still, I did not pursue the issue.

  “Of course,” I said. “But now go put on your pajamas, all right? You can use the bathroom.”

  She trotted off without a word, emerging in about fifteen minutes. I had no anxiety about the time lapse—escape from the bathroom was impossible and it was devoid of potential weaponry.

  “I brushed my teeth,” she announced when she emerged, wrapped in the pink terry-cloth bathrobe I had purchased in anticipation of a little girl’s natural modesty in the presence of a stranger.

  I made up the bed for her, and sat down to read. I left the television on. In the past, that had always succeeded in eventually lulling the children to sleep. But this one proved remarkably resistant. It was almost midnight when I looked up to find her wide awake.

  “
Are you having trouble getting to sleep?” I asked her.

  “No. I’m just not sleepy.”

  “All right.”

  “But I *should* sleep, right?”

  “Well, of course. At some point, everyone—”

  “Could you read me a story?” she asked. “That would make me sleepy, I know it.”

  “I—”

  “There’s lots of books,” she reminded me. “And I haven’t read hardly any of them.”

  “Do your parents usually read to you before you—”

  “No,” she said, her voice flat. “Please?”

  I found a book about a mother polar bear and her cub and their various adventures as they crossed the Arctic ice cap in search of food. True to her word, she was fast asleep before I got a dozen pages into it.

  She appeared to sleep peacefully.

  I felt Xyla in the room, but she wasn’t standing where she could see the screen.

  “This was a lot longer one, huh?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t know what it means. . . .”

  “I thought he was limiting transmission time to prevent us from fingering him, but he has to know there’s no way to do that with these little cookies—they’re files with programs—he keeps mixing in there. Not going over an open line.”

  “But when you send him the answer to all his questions. . .?”

  “I don’t think he’s there, waiting for it. I think the program he’s using just files it someplace else. He could open it whenever he wanted. I think maybe—”

  I held up my hand to silence her, watching his question pop up:

  >>Age first contact?<<

  I wasn’t going to guess what he meant anymore. I played it the way it looked: how old was I when I first met Wesley? Truth is, I wasn’t sure. But I gave Xyla a number for him anyway.

  12

  I could never bring Wesley’s face into my mind. Never see it clearly. He didn’t look like anything. He was a generic. . . never got a second glance from anyone. Most of his targets never saw him at all. This is where I’m supposed to say “except for his eyes,” right? People who write those serial-killer porno books never met the real thing. Anyway, Wesley was no serial killer. He was an assassin. And his eyes didn’t show you anything. Nothing about him did.

  I can hear his voice, though. Clear as if he was right next to me. It was a machine’s voice, lifeless, no inflection. Just a communication device. I remember every word from the last time we talked:

  “Something about a kid?” the ice-man had asked me, wondering how I had stumbled across his business.

  “Yeah.”

  “That soft spot—it’s like a bull’s eye on your back.”

  “Nothing I can do,” I said. Lying to Wesley was. . . wasted.

  “It’s not your problem, right?” he asked me, trying to understand. “Not your kid.”

  “I didn’t want it like this,” I told him. “I wanted to be. . . something else.”

  “What?”

  I dragged on my smoke, knowing I’d finally have to say it. I looked deep into the monster’s empty eyes. “I wanted to be you,” I said.

  “No, you don’t. I’m not afraid. Of anything. It’s not worth it.”

  Even as he said that to me, so many years ago, I knew it was true. But when we were coming up, Wesley was the icon. He was never afraid, even when we were kids. I don’t mean he was ready to go to Fist City with another guy over some insult. But he would take your life if you put your hands on him. Not right then and there—Wesley was no slugger. But someday. Guaranteed. It was all over the street, even then. You fucked with Wesley, you were dead. Money in the bank. Earning compound interest.

  After he got out of prison that last time, I guess he figured he might as well make a living at what he was.

  Wesley had a different mother than me. But his birth certificate had the same blank spots mine did.

  He saved my life once, when we were kids. A stupid thing. Me and another guy in the gang, lying on the rat-slime next to the subway tracks, our heads on the rail. Train coming. First one to jump back loses. I was ready to die right then. Die for a rep I’d never be around to enjoy. To have a name to replace the one I’d never been given. Wesley was the one who pulled me back, just in time. The other guy had already jumped, but I hadn’t seen it. . . not with my eyes closed.

  Later, when Wesley went to work, I never went near him. Once in a while, he’d reach out for me. Whatever he wanted, I would do it. Not because I was afraid of him. Wesley didn’t work like that. No robberies, no extortions, no scams. Wesley killed people. That was his work.

  When he got tired of his work, he finished it. By doing as much of it as he could in one monstrous move.

  The whisper-stream still throbs with it. Wondering if the ice-man had another way out. I knew he didn’t. Knew he wanted to go. I read the note he’d left behind—mailed to me just before he walked his last walk.

  But as long as the whisper-stream flowed, Wesley would never die.

  “You ever watch two girls have sex?” Nadine asked me, a sheaf of paper in her two clasped hands, still trafficking in a product I didn’t want.

  “Yes.”

  “Ever do it with them?”

  “Why?”

  “I thought maybe if I put on a little show for you first—me and my. . . friend—you might change your mind. Ever see a real pony girl? I’m a good rider.”

  I let out a long breath to show her my patience was low. “I already told you once—there’s nothing you could do. Now either give me that stuff or not.”

  But all the paper she’d tempted me over to her house with was crap. Her cop pal had looked a bit deeper, that’s all. And came up empty.

  The guy who opened the door was big, six-six minimum, and built to match. He had a mild face, rimless glasses, short-cropped hair. I remembered him from the place I’d met Crystal Beth, always sitting off in a corner, drawing. And he’d been at this joint too, the first time I’d come. What was his name. . .? Oh yeah:

  “Where’s everybody else, Rusty?” I asked him.

  “Uh, there was a little thing. Earlier. They’ll be back soon.”

  “Okay. I’ll just—”

  “He’s here,” Xyla announced, standing in the doorway to the computer room.

  “Uh, see you later,” the big guy said.

  As soon as we got into her room, Xyla opened him up.

  To my surprise, the child did not rush through the evening meal in her eagerness to play the new game. Indeed, she politely inquired if she could, again, select the menu and, given permission, spent the better part of an hour examining the various options before making a decision. Which was: Pasta in a cream sauce of her own creation speckled with chunks of albacore.

  “It would be better with bread,” she assured me.

  “Bread doesn’t keep well,” I replied. “And since we are going to be—”

  “Well, couldn’t you pick some up? When you go out the next time, I mean?”

  “I will. . . try,” I finally agreed, understanding intuitively that the child was not referring to typical manufactured bread—she expected me to visit an actual bakery. That was out of the question. Still, if I remembered correctly—and, in fact, I have never failed to remember correctly—there was a bakery of some sort right within the airport.

  We ate in relative silence, for which I was grateful. The child’s manners were superb—she invariably asked if I would pass a condiment rather than reaching for it herself. But her visage appeared troubled.

  “Is something wrong, Zoë?” I asked.

  “Do you like it?”

  “It?”

  “The *food*. Do you like the food?”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “Well, you didn’t *say* anything.”

  “That was bad manners on my part,” I said, truthfully enough. “I was enjoying it so that I forgot myself.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” she said, smiling. “I just. . . When people don’t say anyth
ing, I never know. . . I mean, I always think. . .”

  “I promise to tell you what I’m thinking, Zoë. How would that be?”

  “Oh I would *love* that. You’re not. . . teasing, are you? You’ll really tell me?”

  “I certainly will. But only when you ask, fair enough?”

  “Okay! And I won’t ask all the time, I swear.”

  “Whenever you like, child.”

  Throughout the rest of the meal, we talked around pockets of silence, but never once did she ask what I was thinking.

  “Can I do it myself?” she asked as we started to clean up after dinner.

  “I thought it would be easier if we both did it.”

  “No. I mean, yes, maybe it would. But it doesn’t have to be easier, does it? I mean, I would like to do it myself. It would be fun.”

  “Very well, Zoë. And thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” She smiled.

  Not having access to a newspaper, I flicked on the television set to watch PBS as the child busied herself in the kitchen portion of the basement.

  I must have been resting my eyes, half-listening to the television, when the child tapped me on the shoulder. Startled, I turned to her, waiting for her to speak.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing at the screen.

  It only took a second to ascertain. “Some footage of tribal warfare,” I told her.

  “Why are they killing everyone?”

  How to explain xenophobia and its natural byproduct, genocide, to a child? “They hate each other,” I tried for simplicity, knowing what was coming next.

  “Why?”

  I was not disappointed, but no closer to an explanation. It was clear that the child was not trying to be annoying, that she was deeply puzzled by what appeared, on its surface, to be patent insanity. Yet, in thinking through to a response accessible by a child of Zoë’s age, I could not escape the internal logic. After all, tribalism is per se insanity. Still, I made another attempt:

  “Do you know about Indians, Zoë? Have you ever studied about them in school?”

  “Not really. But I know. . . something about them, I guess.”

  “All right. You know Indians are aligned into tribes, yes?”

  “Yes. Like Apaches and Navahos and—”

  “That’s right. Now, even today, there are tribes too. In the Balkans, in Africa, in the Middle East. And some of them hate each other. They have for many, many years. Sometimes, when that kind of hatred builds up long enough, one tribe attempts to exterminate the other.”